Books in the Sociology of Law and Crime series

Explores the interaction between the criminal justice system and the wider concerns of political and social institutions, including the welfare state, social work and forensic psychiatry.

Feminist analysis of the range of critical perspectives on punishment leads to argument that a fuller social understanding of punishment must be informed by feminist research on women's imprisonment.

How can universally valid legal principles possibly exist in a manifestly unequal world? This book looks at how a progressive law may be possible by presenting jurisprudence as a paradigm of legal ideology, unravelling the unjust social dynamic within which law operates and helps create.

Carol Smart presents a new gendered analysis of the power of law and argues for a feminist post- structuralist approach. She comments on pornography, as well as discussing recent research on rape trials and abortion legislation.

Winner of British Sociological Association Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 1993. Examines the taboo of incest from historical and sociological perspectives. Raises important questions on the criminalization of incest.

A radical reappraisal of the role of myth in modern society. Fitzpatrick uses the example of law, an integral category of modern social thought, to challenge modernity and the denial of the relevance of myth to law in modern society.